When I left the evangelical church in 2014, I thought I would never have to deal with their convoluted ideology again.

I was wrong.Terribly wrong.

The ideology has found its way into society through the ex-evangelicals who in the recent years have left the church in search of something more authentic. The trouble is that whereas I, and others, spent a decade deconstructing, a majority left never having challenged the beliefs that made life so intolerable in the evangelical church in the first place. Instead of spending time finding themselves, they found quickly a new home in the left side of the political spectrum. The left gave them an opportunity to experience the "real world." They were allowed to speak about racism and sexism and all the other ills without censur. It was as if the "New Earth" had arrived early without the Second Coming and thousands upon thousands of ex-evangelicals flocked into this new paradise that allowed them to speak freely without having to resort to Christianese.

And speak they did.Speech filled with Christianese.

The ex-evangelicals, who re-named themselves "Social Justice Warriors," talked about "gatekeeping" (a biblical term of warriors placed at openings on walls to protect the city), about "erasing people" (another biblical term found in Revelation where people's names are erased from the Book of Life). They singled out white women as the problem (just as evangelicals had singled out Eve as the source of evil); these women had to "just listen" (just as all women had been told to "just listen" and not speak in the church). They insisted on purity above all, considered thoughts to be worse than actions (since thoughts lead to action), accepted the belief that all white people are racist from birth to death (just like all humans carry with them the Original Sin and can never be free from sin). They believed they would all be saved if they just followed the dogmas of Intersectionality and didn't question them - just like they had followed the dogmas in the church without questioning them. And so, drunk with the freedom to do as they pleased without being called out, the ex-evangelicals set out to free the oppressed. Nothing was as sacred as freeing those who couldn't free themselves. Bible verses playing in their minds, the heavy responsibility to free people on their shoulders, they set out to free people of color, the gay community, the disabled, whomever the Intersectional cult told they needed to free. Fresh out of the church, still convinced the end sanctifies the means, the ex-evangelicals would bully, dox, and shame anyone who was in the way. They would do anything necessary to free the people the church and society at large held hostage, bring them into the City of God where they would be protected by the fierce Social Justice Warriors.

The secular side of Intersectionality welcomed the passionate ex-evangelicals who obeyed their leaders with ease, didn't mind contradictory truths, were easily manipulated into going after a perceived evil without a hint of evidence; who didn't shrink from dehumanizing people in their quest for purity. In the Social Justice Warriors Intersectionality found a crowd that didn't shy away from shaming their opponents, who didn't worry about semantics or logical consistency, who would talk about the 53% and "white feminism" in the same breath, forgetting about the larger political divide (people don't vote only according to one belief); who didn't mind being shamed for being white and privileged. They happily abased themselves, confessed their great sin of having too much and vowed to do better, knowing they would never attain the perfection of sinlessness. But most importantly, they were all too happy to turn a blind eye to the sins of those they had been summoned to protect, just as they had turned a blind eye to the sins of their leaders in the church.

They were the perfect pawns.

What the ex-evangelicals weren't told was that they would be thrown aside as irrelevant as soon as those who were running the show got what they wanted: a new power structure and a re-written narrative. It is naive to believe Intersectionals have any intention of sharing their newfound power with a bunch a Christian white people who are guilty of the sin of white privilege. They are useful as long as they go after other white people and destroy their reputations and businesses with the same zeal as they once destroyed the lives of people perceived not to be pure enough in the eyes of the exacting evangelical belief system. The ex-evangelicals should have seen this from a mile away, since the goal of Intersectionality isn't equality. It never has been and never will be. The goal of Intersectionality is to place those who have historically found themselves on the outskirts of society in the center (as they term it) and send everyone else somewhere else. Where that "somewhere else" is, is never articulated. But knowing theology, it will most likely look like the Catholic Purgatory where people pay penance for venial sins. Or perhaps it will look more like the Ninth Circle of Dante's Inferno. It all depends who does the talking.

We all meet these Social Justice Warriors, especially if we spend any time online. So what to do?

The first rule when meeting an ex-evangelical turned into Social Justice Warrior is simple: never apologize. Their goal is to shame people. If they don't succeed, they will move on.

The second isn't quite as simple, but nevertheless equally effective: ask tough questions. They won't have answers and will resort to bullying tactics, in which case rule number one comes once again into play.

In the end, our goal should be to help these ex-evangelicals find a new healthier life and prevent the political left from imploding under the weight of impossible standards and cognitive dissonance. It is not going to be accomplished as long as we allow the re-writing of the narrative by the Intersectionals in a way that destroys rather than builds. To use the lingo of the left: we are the 99%. What can the 1% do to us?

I'm back at my seemingly favorite topic of late: Intersectional Feminism (IF). There is something about this theory that just doesn't seem right. I've been poking and prodding the theory for quite some time now, trying to find an answer.

Today it arrived on a silver platter in the form of the comment section of New York Times Facebook page. The discussion occurred under an opinion piece titled "When the Suffrage Movement Sold out to White Feminism" written by Brent Staples. Yes, a man wrote an opinion piece about white women's racism. I'm not sure if Mr. Staples is white or not, but he seems to have a lot to say about women's behavior (something all men enjoy doing). And this is one of the oxymoronic facets about IF: men feel free to lecture women on how they should do feminism (Full disclosure: I didn't read the article. I focused on the comments).

For the longest time I have tried to understand why white women became the enemy of feminism with the rise of IF. White women are, after all, women, and feminism is about women's rights. But then, this afternoon, I read the comments under the said article and there it was, in black and white on my screen:

White women can be racist,White men can be sexist,Black men can be sexist,Black women cannot be racist.

The only group that is completely faultless in this scenario is black women. I wondered where such angels could be found, angels who don't hate anyone.

Is this really reality?

Does not one black woman in the US (the conversation centers around the US) hate a European person, or an Asian person, or an Arab, or Native American, or Latin American, or someone who is a mixture of more than one people group? Not one? How extraordinary! We are meant to believe all black women in the US are incapable of hating another person due to their "race" (a silly term to be used since we're all one human race). We are meant to believe that, due to the systematic racism black women experienced, they became completely immune to the emotion of hating another human being due to their race, Black men still kept their sexism intact, but black women became otherworldly saints.

You may wonder what I'm getting at, but just hang on for a second and you'll see I have a good reason for my apprehension. You see, in the past centuries, women (mostly white women, as this happened in Europe), were considered so saintly they lacked the ability to even contemplate the vices the men participated in (such as visiting brothels, habitual drinking etc). Women were SO saintly, they didn't need equal rights, or the vote, or the ability to take care of themselves financially. They were SO saintly, they had become like children, and were therefore treated like children.

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote the following:

“Why are girls to be told that they resemble angels; but to sink them below women? Or, that a gentle, innocent female is an object that comes nearer to the idea which we have formed of angels than any other. Yet they are told, at the same time, that they are only like angels when they are young and beautiful; consequently, it is their persons, not their virtues, that procure them this homage.” ― Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

It was/is their person, not their virtues, that make them angels. They could misbehave, make an occasional blunder, and still be considered angelic. What I'm getting at here is that in an effort to secure equal rights to black women IF has substituted white women with black women by calling them angels.

Innocent females.

Incapable of doing any harm or wrongdoing, the innocent female is lauded and extolled, put on a pedestal. What is forgotten in the process is that the angelic white woman lacked equal rights, and so does the angelic black woman when it comes to the actual realization of her rights. She needs someone else to advocate for her - the IF crowd. And if she makes a nasty comment in the process, that's okay. An innocent, angelic being can be forgiven a few minor missteps as she really doesn't know how to act. She may be innocent, but she's not clever, or capable of taking care of herself. She must be protected by others, the others being the patriarchialists who know how to subject women, how to infantilize women. Black women are only the latest in a long row to receive this treatment.

White women shed this nonsensical patronizing idea of their shoulders sometime during the past hundred years, but I can see why it's so tempting for black women to absorb it now. It's so tantalizing, so wonderfully beautiful after centuries of being considered the villain, the objectified body without a mind. But the pedestal is awfully high and to reach humanity, to be actually treated like a real human (with all the rights and responsibilities thereof), one has to get of the pedestal and join the rest of the crowd. It may seem like a tall order, but if we are ever going to create a society where equal rights reign, we all need to be seen as human. Not as demons, not as angels. Just human. A hundred years ago white women were the angels, black women the demons. Today black women are the angels, white women the demons. And the only ones who lose in both scenarios are women.

Dare to be a feminist who cares for and about all women.Screw IF and patriarchy. Women deserve better.

Author

"Finding the truth is like looking for a needle in the haystack: it's easier if you use a magnet, but you need to know where to look or the magnet becomes useless. To find the truth we need to look for the "why" and not only at the "who," because the "why" explains the "who" in a way that the "who" cannot explain the "why." And when we find the truth, we find freedom." - Susanna Krizo